December 7, 2001

Cagers Attend Spider Invite, Begin Ivy Play

Cornell continues its lightening-quick pace to maturity this winter break as it plays a number of heavyweight opponents including Richmond, Georgia Tech, and Brown. The Red has the 96th toughest schedule in the nation thus far, according to Jeff Sagarin of USA Today, a number that is surely to rise as the season progresses.

Its first seven games were against teams that have a composite record of 30-24 this season, including undefeated Syracuse and one-loss Notre Dame.

Cornell opens the break against Lafayette (3-4) this Saturday in Allan Kirby Sports Center. The Leopards beat the Red 72-62 last season and hold a 8-5 advantage in the series. The squad has been battle-tested itself, falling to Miami, Penn State and Columbia by an average of only eight points. Senior guard Brian Burke leads the team in points per game (14.7), while the team shoots almost 50% from the field. The Leopards hold two freshmen centers over 6-11 but start senior Mick Kuberka, who averages five rebounds per game.

The Red returns home for a game against Lehigh before hitting the road to attend the Spider Invitational and face off against Georgia Tech.

Lehigh has struggled of late, having lost its first seven games — three against Ivy League opponents. Their record can largely be attributed to the turnovers the Mountain Hawks commit — an average of almost 18 per game. Forwards Matt Logie and Scott Taylor are both averaging over 10 points per game.

Richmond hosts the Spider Invitational which will include local favorites VMI and James Madison University. After starting the season with four wins, the Spiders dropped two straight to Virginia Commonwealth University and Mississippi State. Guard Tony Robbins runs the show from the backcourt, leading the team in points per game (16.8) and rebounds per game (9.4). The team is hot on the road, already having won two in a row.

Cornell then travels to Georgia to meet the Yellow Jackets (3-4) for the first ever meeting between these two schools. Head coach Paul Hewitt leads a relatively young squad that lost a number of seniors from last year’s NCAA tournament team. Georgia Tech came six points from handing UNC its worst start ever, lost to Penn, and was blown away by Illinois. The squad’s highlight of the season was a hard-fought 62-61 victory over Wisconsin in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge.

The Red return home for a game against Army on January 5, before hitting the road again. The Black Knights returned all five starters from last season’s 9-19 team, which lost 91-81 to Cornell in overtime. After winning three straight games to open the season, Army dropped three, including a 69-64 thriller against Columbia. In that game, forward Matt Collins recorded a double-double with 24 points and 10 rebounds.

Cornell then begins its Ivy League season against Brown, Yale and Columbia. As a whole, the Ivy League has been performing very well. Last week, the league went 13-4 in non-conference games and is on pace to win 60 this season, upping the record by 10 wins. Brown is by far the hottest team, having recently beaten Big East mainstay Providence, 67-60. It was only the second time the Bears have pulled off the feat in the last 22 seasons and ranks as one of their biggest victories ever. Junior guard Earl Hunt was named Ivy League player of the week as he averaged 30 points in two games.

Yale is also flying high, having scored 80 or more points in four straight games for the first time in its 106 years of basketball. The Bulldogs are averaging 83 points per game and are shooting 45% from the field. Four players average double digit points per game, and center Paul Vitelli has 10 blocks on the season. Cornell leads the series 99-91 and split the home-and-away last season.

The Red closes its winter break against Columbia. The 5-2 Lions have been unstoppable at home, having won three straight including a 53-47 come-from-behind win which saw the team erase an 11-point deficit in the second half. Craig Austin, a 6-6 forward who was last season’s Ivy League player of the year, leads the team with 16.7 points per game. Columbia leads the series 114-82.

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There are lots of things on the walls in the offices of The Sun. Posters, signs, photographs, sports memorabilia, you name it. But in one hallowed space, editors past have collected our best and most important work — the mounted front pages of The Cornell Daily Sun on the day after armed students took over Willard Straight Hall in the name of civil rights, the day after students perished in a residence hall fire. Other front pages have become a part of the rolling memory of the organization: the day after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, the day the U.S. declared war on Japan. They now look yellowed with age, torn at the edges, and they have become a living memory of why we do what we do at the offices of 119 S. Cayuga Street. The first front page in over 30 years to adorn the wall is from Sept. 12. The full-color image of an airplane striking the first tower of the World Trade Center is now pasted up in that hallowed space that has always seemed to guard history. Not many will ever forget the day that marked one of the most horrific acts of war and hatred to take place on American soil. As editors, we will never forget the day the cover was mounted on the wall, the day we became part of history. And we will never forget the days and weeks after as we continued to observe, analyze and report how Cornell as an institution responded. In a famous sermon Dwight L. Moody once said that “character is what you are in the dark.” Never was this more obvious than after Sept. 11 — we have seen some of the most beautiful acts of human kindess, openess and ability to learn and to teach in the face of some of the most trying moments. Students of all backgrounds demonstrated their beliefs and values on campus, rallied other students to engage in healthy dialogue, brought their efforts into Ithaca, to Washington D.C. and to New York City. Professors presented educated expert viewpoints and revived the concept of the “teach-in” to provide a forum for conscientious thought and expression. In this issue we aim to present a synthesized view of the reflection, action, struggles and over-reaching consequences that tragedy has brought to our lives. In what has at times been a painful desire to cover the issue in its entirety, we have discovered some of the brilliance and true spirit of our learning community. We have looked back at issues that surfaced over a semester that at times seemed as if it were turned upside down. The time and energy the reporting and photography staff devoted to this edition showed a professional respect and sensitivity to the issues, a desire to understand and analyze, but most importantly to present to readers, the facts and details about the community in which we all live. The true character of curiosity, diversity and activism that shine on the Cornell campus continue to pull the institution through the seemingly impossible moments. Archived article by Sun Staff

Eamon McEneaney ’77, an integral member of the Cornell men’s lacrosse dynasty of the mid-’70s, perished in the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center. McEneaney, 46, was one of the first alumni confirmed deceased after the tragic events. Considered by many to be one of lacrosse’s all-time greats, he had risen to the ranks of senior vice president and limited partner for the brokerage firm Cantor Fitzgerald, whose offices were on the top floors of the North Tower, which was the first of the pair to suffer damage. Richie Moran, who was McEneaney’s coach at Cornell, suspected the worst when the events of Sept. 11 began to unfold. “I knew he was on floor 104 or 105,” he said. “When the first plane hit, I knew it was difficult to go up and difficult to go down. “Eamon was a remarkable individual, both as an undergraduate and in the real world,” Moran continued. Cantor Fitzgerald was among the hardest hit tenants in the World Trade Center. Of 700 employees thought to have been at work that morning, it is feared that none of Cantor Fitzgerald’s staff survived. As an attackman for the Red in the ’70s, McEneaney amassed a reputation as one of the country’s most feared scorers, earning first-team All-American honors in 1975, ’76 and ’77. In 1977, when he recorded a whopping 25 points in the NCAA Tournament to lead Cornell to a successful defense of its national title, he also was crowned the nation’s most outstanding collegiate player. McEneaney was a member of America’s World Lacrosse Championship team in 1978, and four years later he was named to the Cornell Athletic Hall of Fame. To round out his string of accolades, McEneaney was inducted to the national Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1993. In addition to his legacy in lacrosse, McEneaney was also a standout for the Cornell football team as an All-Ivy wide receiver in 1976. “He was an unbelievable player,” Moran said. But for all his feats as an athlete, McEneaney’s true character shone brightest off the field. Moran found that out when he was walking with McEneaney down the streets of Manhattan earlier this year. After a homeless man had passed by them, Moran asked if McEneaney had run into him before. McEneaney replied that, though he wouldn’t distribute free handouts to the man, he had been regularly taking him out to lunch every Thursday or Friday for some time. “He touched a lot of souls,” Moran said. During the World Trade Center bombings in 1993, McEneaney also proved a hero to 65 people whom he guided down the stairs to safety by forming a human chain system. At each floor, he would make sure to conduct a headcount so that no one would be left behind. “He wouldn’t let them give up,” Moran reflected. “If people had to be saved, he would be the type of guy to do it. “He talked about how much he loved the people he worked with.” Jeff Tambroni, the current head coach of the men’s lacrosse team, met McEneaney prior to last spring’s game against Penn. “One thing I’ve taken away from him is that he had such a passion to be successful,” Tambroni said. As fate would have it, this past May brought together McEneaney, Moran and the rest of the 1976 Cornell national championship team for a 25th anniversary reunion. There, unknowingly at the time, the team that owned college lacrosse in the mid-’70s had a final opportunity to salute its star. “It was sort of a godsend that we were all able to get together,” Moran said. McEneaney is survived by his wife, Bonnie, and their four children. A memorial in McEneaney’s honor was held on Sept. 21 at the First Presbyterian Church in his hometown of New Canaan, Conn. Archived article by Shiva Nagaraj